City council to decide fate of local Tour of Missouri bid

If the Tour of Missouri pro bicycle race comes to Northeast Missouri in 2009, its course will first take it through council chambers at Hannibal City Hall. At the Tuesday, Dec. 2, meeting of the city council, members of that body will be asked permission to proceed with the city’s application.
“I thought it was a good idea to put the cost and program as I understand it before the council and try to determine if it is something they would like to see here or not,” said Jeff LaGarce, Hannibal city manager.
“I want to get permission from the council to bid because there is some public expense to this as far as the city is concerned,” said Beau Hicks, executive director of the Hannibal Convention and Visitors Bureau, who estimated the city’s cash outlay as a race host community at between $6,000 or $7,000.
To a city that is no stranger to hosting special events, LaGarce says the city’s projected cash outlay of $7,600 is not cheap.
“It’s significantly more than a lot of parades and regular street closure type of events that we have here,” he said. “Most of that $7,600, not all of it, but most of it is overtime.”
Hicks says it might be possible to lessen the city’s cash outlay.
“Some of those costs for things like toilet and sanitation, and waste management the (local fund-raising) committee may be able to raise the money to pay for that as well. You may be talking as little as $4,000 or $5,000,” he said.
LaGarce, who was at Tuesday’s local Tour organizational meeting, would not be opposed to reducing the amount of money the city would have to pay out to bring the event to Hannibal next September.
“Nobody has said anything about helping defray those expenses,” he said. “I think in a lot of communities the community probably just picks them (expenses) up. If there was an overage of fund-raising it would probably be appreciated on our end.”
For Hannibal to be a starting point for one of the event’s stages, local Tour fund-raisers will have to raise between $20,000 and $25,000.
“It’s not a firm amount,” said Hicks. “One of the things you have to buy or build as a start city are a couple of stages. We’ve got some moveable stages in this area that I know of. Perhaps we wouldn’t have to necessarily buy one or build one from scratch. We could rent or perhaps even borrow one from a surrounding community. I think there are some ways there we could save money.”
Despite the cash outlay and effort it would take to host the Tour, LaGarce is not opposed to seeing it come to Hannibal.
“It’s something that might be a neat thing,” he said. “My understanding is the nature of this operation is a parade to the fourth power. It would involve a lot of street closures. We would not know the route until well after the selection determinations have been made. It would require a tremendous undertaking to have this event and make it successful. It’s great that there are people who would like to bring it here.”
According to Hicks, interest in bringing the Tour to Hannibal has come from different fronts.
“Not only did a local group come to me and say, ‘We’d like you to bid,’ but the organizers of the event have also asked us to bid. They actually came to us and said, ‘We go to Springfield, Branson, Columbia, we’d like to come to Hannibal,’” he said. “It’s another chance for us to play with the big boys. It’s just the big boys have more money than we do.
“The race officials I think would rather us be a finish city ... one of the bigger stops. It’s just the cost I think would be a little challenging. We’re just going to shoot to be a start city and see if they’ll give us that or not.”
The city’s application is due just days after the next council meeting.
“It goes to council Dec. 2. If I need to revise the bid any for the Dec. 5 deadline, I can do that,” said Hicks. “If it’s an issue where the council says we’d like part of this money paid back to us, then in our bid I can simply say the fund-raising committee would have to raise an additional $2,500 or $3,000 to help offset some of the city costs.”